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Snail sheds foot to stay ahead of snake predators

ONE snail has its own way to save its backside&colon; grow another one. The Satsuma caliginosa snail, which lives on Yonaguni Island off Japan, can shed part of its foot in an effort to escape predatory snakes.

Like some lizards that shed their tails – a process called autotomy – the snail regenerates a new version of its lost body part within a few weeks. “This is the first indication of autotomy in land snails,” says Masaki Hoso of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, who made the discovery (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI&colon; 10.1098/rspb.2012.1943).

“I had no idea that snails did this,” says Susan Evans at University College London, who researches limb loss in lizards.

For the snails, though, the strategy is a particularly desperate one. With only part of a foot, they move even slower than normal, making for a terrible getaway.